


The Tragedy of Pupils and Irises (And Their Absence)

by Sin_of_the_Fallen



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: As according to canon/Coran, Because you can't go around changing up character/species design without there being Reasons, Conspiracy Theorizing done by the Author, Gen, Season 3 Elements Discussed, Specifically the true history of Zarkon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 11:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13569741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sin_of_the_Fallen/pseuds/Sin_of_the_Fallen
Summary: Coran's story of the past feels...fake. But he's not the only witness of those days, so Lance seeks out another viewpoint. He wishes he hadn't.





	The Tragedy of Pupils and Irises (And Their Absence)

Lance…Lance really doesn’t know what to think about the history just revealed.

 

It had never really occurred to him to think about _why_ Zarkon had gone to the Dark Side, how he could have betrayed everyone he knew and everything he stood for. That betrayal had happened millennia ago, the genocide of the Alteans ~~and who knows who else~~ , it was something he just…accepted as fact, and never bothered questioning. It was terrible, tragic, horrifying, but it wasn’t something… There wasn’t anything to question in his mind, and he didn’t think he or the team had a lot to gain by digging into the past when they’d just found themselves conscripted by magical robot lions to fight an impossible war.

 

They had enough to deal with in the present, no need to go looking for trouble in the past as well.

 

Though, if he had been asked to give an opinion as to what he might have thought went through Zarkon’s mind, he supposed he would have said it was one of those things that must have happened so slowly no one noticed it was too late. Or maybe there had been something or someone who shoved him off the edge of sanity, and no one would admit or address it.

 

(Sometimes you have that one friend you love; you know they’re not quite right, might be a little dangerous, but you love them. And you look the other way, make excuses, when they seem to be crossing a line they wouldn’t before, then before you know it the friend you knew is _gone_ but you can’t handle that. So you look at the monster that wears your friend’s skin and love it, praying that your friend will return even when you know deep down in the marrow of your bones he won’t. And it’s not until the monster has no use for you that it’ll ruin your delusion, and by then the betrayal is expected but you still hope in vain –)

 

Either way, Lance had never once thought that the story would sound like this. It sounds so _fake_ in a way, like this was a sanitized fairy tale version of the events that actually occurred. But even with the sheer wrongness this story gives him, Lance almost is ready to believe this because the one telling them this is Coran.

 

Almost.

 

* * *

 

As he looks up at Blue, Lance reminds himself that Coran wasn’t the only source of information he could consult.

 

“Hey gorgeous, can you open up for me? I need to talk, and I really don’t want to be overheard. You get me lovely?”

 

And Blue, the leading lady of his heart no matter what Lion he might need to pilot or who his flirtatious target was, opened up for him like they’d never been parted. It was enough to bring a tear to his eye after her rejection, but it soothed the naysaying doubts and confirmed what he’d always known logically. Blue hadn’t changed her mind about him, they all just had had to bow to the demands of their new situation. No matter how much they might not want to.

 

It was like nothing had changed as he walked up her ramp, and sat himself inside her cockpit, but he could feel her cool, inquiring touch in his mind as soon as he closed his eyes. They weren’t here to bond, to just enjoy each other as they had before Shiro’s disappearance had forced the change on them.

 

“Blue…You were there back then. Before Zarkon became…well, Zarkon.”

 

Her cool touch became the arctic, ice forming in her presence as a rage older and darker than humanity itself washed over her at the name of the traitor.

 

“Coran told us a little about it, how it happened. But, how could Zarkon _come back to life?_ How did any of those events happen like that?” The words burst from Lance in frustrated confusion, because it _didn’t make sense._

“Can you show me what you remember? Shiro mentioned things about how Black showed him some of her, your past. I, I just need to know if I’m crazy for feeling like Coran was lying!”

 

It felt dirty to think that he was accusing the Altean of lying, but Lance just couldn’t bring himself to take the story told as truth. And Blue…She considered. She pressed on him the sensation of _watching the tide recede and waiting for the next high_ , which was one of her favorite ways of saying “be patient while I think.”

 

She gives him no answer, but when he suddenly is aware of the world as seen through Blue’s eyes he already knows her response. So he watches, watches how the Paladins of old come together, and thinks to Blue,

 

“They really weren’t a tight-knit group. Not really.”

 

And Blue doesn’t respond, but the way he feels the ice in her crack like spring was rolling in tells him she agrees, and isn’t happy that she does.

 

But something is nagging at him, even more than noticing Blue’s shift in mood. There is…something. Something about the Galra, something about Zarkon, that is just bugging him. It’s subtle, because if it was blatant he wouldn’t be feeling like there was a itch he needed to scratch. A mental itch.

 

“Blue…Can you magnify on the Galra? Like, all of them? Something feels…off.”

 

Blue obliges him, and her high resolution eyes zoom in on a scene she had once observed of Galra scientists puttering around the Lions, asking Zarkon questions. It takes him a moment to take in the sudden shift in perspective, and another moment of staring at the Galra for it to click.

 

“They all have pupils! Irises! Blue, they actually have eyes like me! Okay so the whites of their eyes are actually _yellow_ but–”

 

But he has never seen a single Galra of his time period with these eyes. All of them, without exception, have just a blank yellow sclera. And something about this makes his hair on end, makes him tense as his intuition _howls_.

 

“Blue… When did Zarkon’s eyes change?”

 

She shows him images of war, deadly and bloody, and how her first Paladin fought against the monster wearing Zarkon’s body and had glowing yellow orbs leaking streams of magic, of quintessence, instead of Zarkon’s eyes.

 

“Can…can you show me any other Galra you saw from the war? I need to see their eyes.”

 

She does. They have the blank eyes he knows from modern Galra, but theirs seem to occasionally leak a mote of glowing energy.

 

“...”

 

He wants to say something, wants to scream at the implications, wants to hunt down the Blades and ask if they know what has been done to them, wants to storm up to Allura and Coran and shake them both and demand to know if they…But the storm of emotion washes out of him at Blue’s gentle touch, her vast ocean swallowing his emotions in their enormity. Her touch lets him process, think of what he learns, and Lance swallows the bitterness that rises in his heart because there isn’t a point to knowing this.

 

It’s been ten thousand years and counting since whatever Zarkon had done to his entire people. He has no proof beyond the memories of a magical robot lion that only a few people could talk to, and only a few of that select group could get their lions to share like this. There is no “recovering” the species or culture from this even if he could make himself heard and believed.The tragedy of the Galra has been brushed under the rug with the absoluteness and efficiency that had seen the other inconvenient truths of genocide and Zarkon being a damn _undead monster_ buried.

 

It doesn’t matter that he knows now that Zarkon did something to dominate the free will of his species, and that their descendants probably are bound just as tightly to Zarkon judging by their eyes. It doesn’t matter that Lance knows that every time he aims at a Galra now, he will feel a lick of horror and despair. Lance knowing this truth changes nothing except how he views the Galra; because now he cannot help but see them as yet more victims of Zarkon. Something he cannot afford, since the Galra being his enemy, Voltron’s enemy, hasn’t changed.

 

As he feels the weight of this knowledge settle on him, a weight he feels in his bones he will never shrug off, Lance accepts that he cannot speak of this to anyone except Blue. His team cannot afford to borrow more sorrows from the past, and he wishes he had remembered that before he went to Blue.

 

“Blue…I…I’ve seen enough. Can we just, go back to the ocean for a while?”

 

Blue’s ocean enfolds Lance in their endless depths, and for a while the weight of his new knowledge seems less.

 

(Lance does not pursue the fakeness of Coran’s stories again. Sometimes, it is crueler to know the truth than to know the lie. And he doesn’t want to know if Coran knows he’s lying, or if Alfor or Coran himself lied until he didn’t know the truth.)

**Author's Note:**

> Season 3 had a lot of things for me to pick at, but I think one of the most glaring ones was the Zarkon backstory. It really did feel fake in the way it was presented, but I wasn't getting into that in this fic. This fic was to address the fact that Not-Evil Zarkon had *eyes,* which considering everything...is very, very suspicious. At least this helps to explain how "man who came back from the dead managed to rally his species to go to war" was ever possible.


End file.
